2013/02/21

KirbyKid had reached out to me a few weeks ago to see if I'd talk with him about my game Flydrill and the ideas about its mass appeal, or lack thereof, which I'd written about in an earlier blog post. I've been spending a lot of time lately listening to podcasts featuring conversations between indie developers, particularly my favorite, Infinite Ammo, so I thought it could be fun to try being in one myself. :)

And yeah, it was fun! I talked about Flydrill, and a bit about The Love Letter, and even a little bit of ranting on the attitudes behind typical free-to-play monetization schemes, which hopefully no one will quote me on. :p

The entire podcast is two hours long, but you can hear me starting at 04:35, and then snippets throughout until the interview segment concludes at 30:00. KirbyKid has interleaved interviews between myself and a mobile-social game developer named Matt Fairchild, so as he switches back and forth I end up representing the more gameplay-focused, "indie" side of things. Fine with me! :) It's funny hearing myself in a podcast - I used to hate hearing my own voice recorded and played back, but now I'm just intrigued by the unfamiliarity of it. Actually, I was very curious to listen so I could find out what I had actually said, because I had forgotten most of it! :p

Here's a quote from the podcast to give you a sense of it:

On the other hand, Alex is very concerned with gameplay, or games as art. He's focused on conveying information, guiding the player, and building systems that have meaningful interaction without cluttering the experience with leveling up, experience points, and other hooks that complicate what games are. Remember, there are common gameplay features that, when taken to an extreme, work against games as art. It seems that Alex is very aware of this balancing act in game design.

Unfortunately, KirbyKid has announced that he won't be doing any more podcasts, only three episodes in, because he can't afford to spend so much time on them. Well, I know how that is. But it's too bad.